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"We are trying to understand why sex is the most searched for topic on the Internet." MSNBC is taking "what we believe is the most comprehensive cybersex survey to hit the Web," because this online fascination with sex is just baffling to them. I wonder if anyone will be giving honest answers -- I'm certainly not planning to ("yep, monkeys and Jell-O...").
posted by tregoweth at 11:41 PM PST - 5 comments

"Basically, you die earlier and spend more time disabled if you're an American rather than a member of most other advanced countries."

(Some of you might want to consider moving to Japan -- 74.5 average healthy life expentancy, not to mention cheap and yummy sushi every single day if you felt like it!)
posted by lia at 11:39 PM PST - 3 comments

Interest in traffic Web site no accident
after a dramatic increase in fatal accidents, the osaka prefectural police started posting the exact locations of upcoming traffic inspections [for speeding & drunk driving] on their website, and now they are logging record numbers of hits -- the idea being that the more people who know about their plans for traffic inspections, the better. the police feel that disclosing such information will help cut down on the number of deadly road accidents.
whether it has had a noticeable effect on traffic safety, however, is uncertain -- the number of drivers caught for violations is about 10 percent less than by this time last year, but the death toll on the prefecture's roads are about the same
posted by palegirl at 8:51 PM PST - 4 comments

World Internet Animation Competition Winners - Shockwave.com has announced the winners of the World Internet Animation Competition. The contest, held in conjunction with the annual World Animation Celebration, was open to original animated productions in Shockwave, Flash, Quicktime, Pulse or Windows Media formats. Artists submitted more than 650 entries in ten categories. (link from Flazoom.com - where they have a partial list of links to the winners's sites!)
posted by DragonBoy at 8:29 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Corel lays off 320. Why wasn't Michael Cowpland one of them? Why does that man still have a job at that company?
posted by Steven Den Beste at 6:37 PM PST - 12 comments

I don't care if it's the greatest operating system in the world.. It's still got a stupid name:
Doesn't Bell Labs' Plan 9 OS remind you of Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space?
Watching my Geek Rating drop to minus-23...
posted by wendell at 5:59 PM PST - 5 comments

I knew this had to happen eventually. Someone finally developed a digital camera in the form factor of a roll of 35mm film. That means you can just pop it in your regular ol' film camera, and boom, it's digital.
posted by endquote at 5:48 PM PST - 5 comments

Microsoft fires the final bullet into it's head. As of April 1st, OEMs may no longer ship a CD-ROM containing a full-installable copy of Windows with the machines they build. They can ship a "recovery CD", or just a "recovery partition". So, what did you get for your $90?

You got to rent Windows until you upgraded your machine.
posted by baylink at 2:34 PM PST - 15 comments

Liquid water discovered in a meteorite by scientists at Johnson Space Center in Houston. The rock was discovered in 1998 by kids who saw it fall near a small Texas town.
posted by Mars Saxman at 2:28 PM PST - 1 comments

I know we aren't supposed to toot our own horns... but I just had to share my new page with all ya'll. I hope you enjoy it as it took me months to work on and finish...
posted by da5id at 2:13 PM PST - 14 comments

Pinnacus looks like an interesting idea: a tool for bringing together writers and sites looking for "content." (Lifted from Jakob)
posted by LoganAxis at 12:28 PM PST - 3 comments

The discovery of mirror neurons in the frontal lobes of monkeys, and their potential relevance to human brain evolution — which I speculate on in this essay — is the single most important "unreported" (or at least, unpublicized) story of the decade. I predict that mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology: they will provide a unifying framework and help explain a host of mental abilities that have hitherto remained mysterious and inaccessible to experiments.

--V.S. Ramachandran

(after you read the essay, you might be interested in the responses.)
posted by grumblebee at 11:38 AM PST - 1 comments

Angelina Jolie puts Jay Leno in the hot seat. Did anyone catch this? Sounds like media cannibalism fun. Too bad I don't watch Leno.
posted by highindustrial at 10:47 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Chalk one up to Freedom of Expression! *** WARNING *** Viewers may be offended by bare-asses sticking up in the air!!! Is this art? In my view, yes. Maybe next time they can face upward and fill in the potholes, instead of creating more speed bumps.
posted by da5id at 9:42 AM PST - 19 comments

The world's most successful terrorist group strikes again. Although they can't claim the numbers of other terrorist groups, 17 November is considered to be one of the deadliest. Claiming over 20 kills with none of their members ever having been captured or killed is something to be proud of I guess. When I was stationed over in Greece, this group was our biggest fear, besides the fact that it was rumored that the group had links to the Socialist Party of the government and that the party "assisted" (using the term loosely) them from being captured. I had hoped that they had turned to internal terrorism and not International, as I hadn't heard anything about them in the last 7 years, but I guess that hope was optimistic.
posted by da5id at 9:37 AM PST - 1 comments

My new favorite website is explodingdog.com which is the best of a new genre of websites (new to me anyhow) on which an artist creates something based on your suggestions. The artist at this site will draw a portrait of your pet if you donate $75 dollars to an animal shelter. Too bad my hamster died. Another variation on this theme is the digital doodlebox which displays a simple graphic and invites anyone to submit a variation of it. These fun sites have inspired me to add something similar to my site. Do you folks know of any other good sites like these?
posted by grumblebee at 9:30 AM PST - 7 comments

Two of the Salon staffers fired this week were the founders of the Mothers Who Think section. Chalk one up for the other mothers.
posted by rcade at 9:29 AM PST - 3 comments

Do you save your receipts? Aparently somebody saves a little too many.
posted by vitaflo at 8:42 AM PST - 5 comments

Solar Flares!
posted by plinth at 8:41 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Ahhh Yeah - Portible Sony Playstation Wether you are into gaming or not this ranks as cool as the Apple IIc, Sony Sports Walkman, Swatch, Palm VII, you name it! Portible gaming with connectivity...
posted by Brilliantcrank at 8:24 AM PST - 10 comments

Identity swapping makes life relative

Do any of you do the Safeway Card Shuffle? I think I probably would, but then again the level of tracking where I live is currently negligible, so it isn't yet an issue. How about where you live?

And how does this tie in to online privacy, like advertising cookies and programs like RealPlayer and GoZilla that track and report where you've been and what you've been doing?
posted by lia at 1:20 AM PST - 8 comments